The social and ecological footprint of renewable power generation plants. Balancing social requirements and ecological impacts in an integrated approach

Abstract

It is necessary to combine ecological and social assessment of energy supply options in an integrated approach to come to a holistic understanding of acceptable scenarios. The study thus argues the importance of a thorough ecological basis for social acceptance analyses in this context and exemplifies an integrated approach in which scenarios are evaluated from both ecological and social perspectives.To illustrate the methodology, first, spatially explicit scenarios of electricity supply were assessed according to their ecological footprint by deducing ecological values of the respective landscapes from biotope valences. Following, the scenarios and their ecological assessment served as input for an empirical survey to assess attitudes and preference for an electricity mix (shares of wind power, photovoltaics (PV), and biogas), land use for the infrastructure (in the forest/on pastures), as well as specific combinations of electricity mix and land use.It is shown how, by this two-step procedure, socially preferred and ecologically sustainable scenarios (in this case, electricity mix with a high share of PV (on roofs) with the remaining infrastructure on pastures) can be identified and evaluated within one frame of reference. Methodological challenges and policy implications of the approach are discussed.